In 1998, there was a big fuss that started at the Sundance Film Festival about a documentary called American Movie. The movie itself was about the process that two Milwaukee natives went through in an attempt to make another movie called Coven (which later got made based on the success of the documentary about the failure of making Coven). The movie was enlightening, yes, but really seemed quite staged at times. Recently screening Pitch, the story of two would-be Canadian scripters attempting to sell their story at the 1996 Toronto Film Festival, among other places, I realized that this nearly unheard of 1997 release was exactly what American Movie had tried to be: a funny, witty pseudo-documentary about two regular guys trying to make it in the film industry.

It took a short while for me to warm up to the antics of the two leads, Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice since some of their script pitching ideas seemed a tad peculiar to me: everyone should know that calling a big star’s agent and telling him that you’ve written a script for his client is a completely fruitless endeavor. However, Hotz and Rice didn’t know this, which made them more sympathetic leads and their naivety in this respect made their experiences pitching their script that much more entertaining.

The highlight of this new to video film comes when Hotz and Rice decide to visit the local Toronto Film Festival (with camera crew in tow) in an effort to hand copies of their script to the celebrities who attend. For their part, the celebrities who appear in Pitch, Eric Stoltz, Matt Dillon, Roger Ebert and Neil Simon among others, are very affable and receive the Canadian duos questions in a bemused and honest fashion.

This is completely the wrong way to get a movie made, but, is nonetheless strangely enjoyable.